Transformational Leadership Case

Transformational Leadership

Juvonnie Kinchen

University of Phoenix

Transformational Leadership

To be an effective leader one must understand what it takes t be a leader and develop his or her skills accordingly. In fact, an effective leader must be transformational. The opportunities for becoming a leader are infinite in today’s world. However, there are just as many challenges. Organizations expect to hire the best and brightest of the pack. Today’s leaders are expected to be smart, innovative, and capable. Thus, transformational leadership is dependent up the “the leader’s ability to inspire trust, loyalty, and admiration in followers, who then modify their individual interests to the interests of the group (Clawson, 2012, p. 417).

Most leaders understand that attaining organization goals is a group or team effort, any efforts to become an effective leader must emulate the same. The leader’s efforts must encourage team building, must maintain the trust of the people, and must include those involved in the decision-making process, so every member is inspiring to rise to higher levels of understanding, creation, motivation, and success. The transformational leadership style as described by James MacGregor Burns (as cited by Wren, 1995, p. 101) describes the style of leadership I try to practice when building teams. He described transformational leadership as: “Such leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with other in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality … . Their purposes, which might have started out as separate but related become fused. Power bases are linked not as counterweights, but as mutual support for common purpose.” As has been reiterated in many books, articles, speeches, and classrooms, transformational leadership is about change and change is about people. Still, there can be no change without solid and effective communication.

        It seems obvious that every leader and potential leader should want to enhance and hone his or her communication skills because communication is the tool he or she will use the most. This is particularly important to a leader when he or she is trying to build a team. As I continue to grow and hone my leadership skills and abilities, the ability to communicate effectively, persuasively, and honestly is paramount for me.

Communication: Leadership Style Influence

As previously stated, transformational leadership is about change and in a team environment the perception of change can be highly motivating or highly demotivating. This is where being able to communicate effectively can make or break a team. A leader must be able to communicate the vision, goals, and mission to the team members, leadership, and any external stakeholders in a way that all understand what effect a potential change will have. Through the leader’s communication, all must understand their roles, responsibilities, and vested interests in the change and/or projects that may cause change.

As a growing transformational leader, my leadership style influences how I communicate to internal and external stakeholders. For example, leaders understand, or at least they should understand, that in order their team or teams to be effective, they need to have a shared knowledge base. This knowledge base, according to Thompson (2011), allows teams to efficiently process and encode relevant information and then act upon it in a thoughtful and appropriate fashion.

My strengths are reflected in my people skills (my abilities to collaborate and work with and/or lead groups or teams to success in accomplishing shared goals); my conceptual skills (my imagination and creativity); my judgment; and my character. Working with people of varying backgrounds, ethnicities, with diverse skills and knowledge has allowed me to learn and expand my leadership skills in those areas.

My vulnerabilities involve personal traits, such as not always listening to my inner voice and taking on more than I can handle because I am not always organized. To improve, I consistently work to be fully prepared, manage my time more effectively, and keep my focus on the tasks at hand. Additionally, I strive to not become a leader that serves an institution. I fight against becoming a prisoner of habits, practices, and rules, so that I do not become an ineffectual leader. As stated by Clawson (2012), a leader must be able to inspire trust, loyalty, and admiration in his/her employees. Therefore, discovering the traits, skills, abilities, and best practices used by today’s effective leaders, and applying them to my evolving leadership style is a significant goal in becoming the transformational leader I want to be.

For instance, I try to increase my degree of cognitive complexity, which defined by Sashkin and Sashkin (2003) is the leader’s ability to do multidimensional thinking at a high level. In an organization, such as Naval Sea Systems Command, multidimensional thinking is vital ability for leaders to have, especially when one needs to orchestrate an entire set and sequence of decisions, toward a single crucial goal or action. Mastering multidimensional thinking will help me to manage a lot of information and quickly grasp relationships among rapidly changing events and environments, such as the current government budget crisis.